In the eight years since we started CoffeeRatings.com, we’ve been patiently waiting for something better. After all, we built CoffeeRatings.com out of frustration over a lack of useful quality information about area coffeehouses in a semi-structured, objective-criteria-driven format. So you’d think we’d be encouraged by the acute rise in venture-capital-funded code monkeys who promise to solve our existential crisis of determining “the best” at anything. In reality, this flurry of new Web sites and mobile apps only seems to be making the problem worse.

A brief history of bests…

Besides being a First World Problem, finding the best at anything is a sisyphean effort. As Howard Moskowitz demonstrated decades ago, there is no “best” — only many bests, depending on personal tastes. But that didn’t prevent the likes of Yelp from feigning an effort. That effort is based on a completely open system where any schmuck with a keyboard can praise or bash an institution without any instruction, guidelines, nor selection criteria to speak of. Furthermore, Yelp games reviews as more of a form of social currency than any objective opinion.

As ridiculous as you might think the old school Zagat guides are by comparison, at least they offer three objective criteria to score on. Even so, Zagat recently whored themselves out to rating food trucks. Someone please explain to us again how any food truck could legitimately earn more than a zero score out of three for “ambience”.

On the mobile side of things, we have examples such as the San Francisco’s Best Coffee iPhone app. There the fatal flaw is that most mobile app developers treat location as of primary concern over quality — likely just because you can (with a phone’s geolocation services). Hence why we never appreciated coffee maps as anything more than eye candy.

The editors for the app are based in London, and they use whether a cafe is “independent” or not as a major reason for inclusion. (Are we supposed to ignore that Blue Bottle Coffee is technically a chain?) Furthermore, any Top 25 ratings are handled Yelp-style, resulting in very dubious cafes like Tartine Bakery getting rated in the Top 7.

New best bets… or betting on bests

Taking a sample of the new crop of wannabees in the best-annointing market, we’ll start with FindTheBest. Let’s look at their espresso machine rankings for example:

1. Rancilio Silvia LE 2010
2. Mr. Coffee ECM20
3. Mr. Coffee ECM160
4. Rancilio Silva
5. De Longhi EC 155

Their top choice of a Rancilio Silvia is definitely a positive move — one that keeps you out of the future landfill that primarily decks the aisles of a Williams-Sonoma. But is it truly the best? Or is it more like the least you can spend on a respectable home machine? Even so, when it is immediately followed up by two Mr. Coffee models that each cost under $35 — followed by the Rancilio Silvia again — what are we supposed to think?

Let’s switch our attention to another find-the-best app entrant in Oink, with its iPhone app just released today. Oink is a product of Kevin Rose’s new company, Milk.

If you don’t know who Kevin Rose is, we envy you. He’s the founder of SF’s Digg.com and the closest thing to Justin Bieber for the dot-com set. Not long after the collapse of Enron, both Digg and its founder quickly became everyone’s “Web 2.0″ darling for several years — years we spent scratching and shaking our heads asking, “How is this going to make any money?”

During those years, cheerleading crowds simply put fingers in their ears, yelling “La-la-la! Can’t hear you!” as they made a cybercelebrity out of Mr. Rose — right on down to featuring him on downtown advertising kiosks. Today, Digg circles a financial drain that’s becoming ever-shallower. Everyone has pretty much since looked away, shielding their eyes from the inevitable.

Fast forward to 2011. For a guy who grew up in Redding, you’d think he’d know just enough local history to realize that calling your SF-based company “Milk” carries a lot of baggage. But whether or not that makes you think the guy is living in the closet, here’s a look at what Oink’s #coffee hashtag currently scores for “best coffee”:

1. Drip Coffee from Blue Bottle Coffee kiosk
2. Blue Bottle Cocktail at NOPA
3. Coffee at Stable Cafe
4. New Orleans Iced Coffee at Blue Bottle Coffee
5. Gibraltar at Blue Bottle Coffee kiosk
6. Coffee… It Gets Stuff Done at Starbucks
7. Four Barrel
8. Blue Bottle Drip Coffee at Cafe Divis
9. Blue Bottle Beans at the Blue Fog Market
10. Blue bottle coffee at Golden Bean Coffee
11. Blue Bottle Beans at Summit Cafe

What the hell are we supposed to make of this list? Other than it is wholly unstructured and that someone has an obsessive Blue Bottle fetish, how is this list in any way useful to us? We’ve got restaurant cocktails, roasted bean duplicates, drip coffee duplicates, platitudes about coffee, and the random business name all jumbled together to make a Top 10 list.

Mr. Rose says his inspiration for Oink came from his obsessive love of fine tea. But with an app like this, any Top 10 likely includes references to the Tea Party, teabagging, and Rose’s favorite oolong repackaged seven different ways. Milk’s employees better put snorkels and fins on their Amazon wish lists this Christmas, as another whirling drain doesn’t seem far off the horizon.

Lastly, we turn to Amen, where we learn:

Welcome to Amen, the place for battling it out over the best and the worst in life.
…
Amen is for all those times you think to yourself, “This is the BEST! (or WORST!)”

Of course they have an iPhone app, because apparently you cannot function in society without a 3.5-inch screen telling you how. And playing with the app, we still don’t get the point. It’s raison d’être seems centered around submitting a rousing evangelical “amen” to someone else’s proclamation of greatness. Such as “the best coffee shop ever,” which is currently listed as a toss up between Blue Bottle Coffee Company, Starbucks, and “My Ass”.

This latest round of technical and social innovations doesn’t seem to make us any smarter. In fact, it just makes us collectively a whole lot dumber with the added social commiseration of “failing with friends.”

In the meantime, we’ll have to settle for Shawn Johnson’s word for it when she says, “My tacos? The best!” in an old TV commercial just this side of child pornography…

This week, Citysearch.com announced that the votes have been tallied once again for their annual “Best Coffee” poll: Best of Citysearch San Francisco 2007 – Best San Francisco Coffee. And is there anything more effective than the annual readers poll for highlighting all the anomalies and flaws of open user review systems? I know I like being reminded every year that Chevy’s is the best Mexican restaurant this metropolis, with its proud Latino heritage, has to offer.

So, without further ado, here is a summary of their 2007 readers’ poll winners — along with their corresponding 2006 rankings and their current ranks on CoffeeRatings.com (many of which are tied with others for the same ranking, btw).

† — Highest-rated of multiple cafés in the chain chosen for ranking
‡ — 2007 Citysearch Editorial Winner (also 2006 Editorial Winner)

Like the Citysearch editors at least, we do love Blue Bottle. Even if they make up crack-pot drinks like the Gibraltar — named after the glass it comes in, and said to be a cross between a latte and a cappuccino. (Given that most San Francisco cappuccini are more like voluminous, full-on caffè latti in Italy, I’m really not sure of the point. This would be like 7-Eleven offering a 32-oz Big Gulp as a step down from their 44-oz Super Big Gulp®.)

But dropping off Citysearch’s “Best of” list in 2007 were:

• Caffè Greco (formerly #7)
• Blue Danube (formerly #8)
• Caffè Roma (formerly #9)

Out with the old, in with the new, perhaps? Well, if by “new” you mean being replaced by three entries that don’t quite rank in the CoffeeRatings.com Top 100 for SF. (There are currently 25 places tied for 99th, and it’s unlikely that Gallery Café could come out on top in a tie-breaker.) Of course, that says nothing of the neighborhood lobbyists who haven’t ventured very far and consistently rank Café Abir and Tartine Bakery on this poll.

Speaking of Tartine Bakery, after taking a year off the list, Citysearch reviewers once again lost their minds and returned it for an appearance in 2007 — the only returnee to Citysearch’s Top 10 list. This despite the fact that their sister restaurant, Bar Tartine, serves espresso good enough to crack the Top 100 and yet doesn’t rank on Citysearch. Ah, those cruel anomalies…

If I ever begin to think that CoffeeRatings.com has become redundant and superfluous for Bay Area espresso lovers, annual reader polls like this do wonders to keep me putting off “retirement.”

This restaurant sister to the Tartine Bakery & Café opened in 2005. It has been through one relocation and a few head chefs since then. Yet the food is very good at this long space with an open kitchen and scattered lighting.

Bar Tartine inherited the classic two-group Faema E61 machine from the bakery since opening this separate location (the bakery replaced it with a higher-output La Marzocco). But instead of Mr. Espresso here, they use Blue Bottle Coffee. They pull shots fairly high in classic brown Nuova Point cups with a dark brown, thinner crema (that looks much richer than it really is) — often with lighter spots at the pours. It has a mellow pungency suggesting herbs (some thyme, etc.), but it lacks the acidic brightness typical of fresh Blue Bottle Coffee.

Are they letting James Freeman’s coffee sit on the shelf for long periods? Or is this another example of Tartine’s skills at coffee making never measuring up to the reputation of their baked goods? Perhaps the weakest effort I’ve yet experienced for a place using Blue Bottle beans — they could have just as easily used Martha & Bros. beans for a similar result. But for restaurant espresso, this is good stuff.

Read the review of Bar Tartine.

I’m a little slow this time around, but not long ago Citysearch.com announced their 2006 readers’ poll winners for the best coffee in San Francisco: Best of Citysearch San Francisco – Best San Francisco Coffee. This is something of an annual tradition, as we reviewed Citysearch’s 2005 coffee winners. (When you think of it, naming anything “first annual” is rather non-sensical.)

So here, in summary, are their 2006 readers’ poll winners — along with their corresponding 2005 ranks and their current ranks on CoffeeRatings.com (many of which are tied with others for the same ranking, btw).

† — Highest-rated of multiple cafés in the chain chosen for ranking
‡ — 2006 Citysearch Editorial Winner

Dropping off Citysearch’s “Best of” list in 2006 were:

• Tartine Bakery (formerly #5) — Maybe readers finally saw through the Martha Stewart smokescreen?
• Mr. Espresso (formerly #6) — A deserving candidate. But I’m shocked that they even listed last year, given that they don’t sell prepared coffee to the retail public.
• The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf (formerly #10) — More outlets in S.F., and around the world, and perhaps not enough votes from L.A. transplants this time around.

Perhaps the most surprising omission in all of this is Ritual Coffee Roasters, the reigning #1 on CoffeeRatings.com for almost a year now. And while I may be just one vote, hopefully that means something — because I seriously doubt any of these readers made their top picks by comparing their choices with 526 other places they’ve tried in S.F. (And I’m not even getting into the use of objective criteria and standardized comparisons.)

And thus lies the major problem with popularity polls like this. Just how many people voted for Café Abir as having the best S.F. coffee after making a serious, objective comparison with one or two dozen other places in the city — let alone finding them ranking just below 439 others on their “Best of” list? (Though I am long overdue for a revisit there.) This is why I find Citysearch’s Editorial Winner choice as the most credible piece of information about the whole exercise.

If you have ever witnessed a Battle-of-the-Bands-like popularity contest, popularity polls like Citysearch’s “Best of” or open popularity contest (“review”) sites like Yelp are no different. While there’s a chance that some trendlines emerge with multiple votes, the truth is that there is no baseline… no control set… no standards upon which to judge. As a result, all these polls do is end up re-enforcing what we collectively already know — and not exploring what we collectively don’t know, but probably should know. We learn only about ourselves and nothing about good coffee. Because unfortunately, popularity rarely equates with quality.

InsideBayArea.com published an article today by a self-employed writer (and cooking class instructor) who named some of her favorite coffeehouses around the country: Inside Bay Area – It’s more than just coffee — it’s a bowl for the soul. Yes, she unimaginatively resorted to the ever-popular, ever-tedious caffeine riff (calling coffeehouses “caffeine dens”). But she claims to have sampled a lot of coffee drinks.

Among her listed favorites is SF’s own Tartine Bakery & Café, which, given their marginal espresso quality, seems like a Martha Stewart-inspired cop out. However, it’s clear from her stated criteria that she defines a “coffee drink” as something that requires a recipe. And the “vibe” and ambiance of the place counts as least as much as what is in the cup. She identifies her all-around favorite as Java on Fourth in Ketchum, Idaho — and primarily for the “buttery scones”; a custom drink consisting of coffee, hot chocolate, and cream (the “Bowl of Soup” … unless you’re a cat, beware of coffee served in bowls); and “tacky-but-cool patchwork leather easy chairs”.

It’s enough to drive an espresso nazi insane. I’m reminded of Tony Shalhoub in the brilliant art-versus-business foodie movie, The Big Night, where his character, a chef artiste named Primo, rants in outrage against the philistine tastes of the customers at a popular rival restaurant, “Do you know what happens in that restaurant every night? Rape! Rape! …The rape of cuisine.”

Of course, the brutal truth of the movie is that without attempting to cater to those philistine tastes, Primo’s restaurant would be a commercial failure. Any espresso shop owner who plans to stay in business also knows this. Could you imagine the equivalent of Primo as a barista? “What? You want a latte after 11am? And with caramel on top? In Italy, this is blasphemy!”

The fact is that mainstream America loves Starbucks and wouldn’t have it any other way, despite all their obvious shortcomings. I feel fortunate that the economic coffee ecosystem allows the occasional stellar café to survive just on the merits of its exceptional espresso; they will ultimately develop a loyal following that mass appeal cafés could only dream of. Now what to do about those nightmares of peppermint mochas and gingerbread lattes…

First Coffee^SM is a blog that generally focuses on issues related to CRM, or Customer Relationship Management — and generally not on anything having to do with coffee (go figure). Except today, where David Sims commented on how Starbucks‘ worldwide geographic sprawl has set new standards of customer service for coffeehouses everywhere: On Starbucks, CRM, Coffee Shops and Customer Service, Part I.

Mr. Sims writes that there is a lot of whining from mom & pop coffeehouses — making out Starbucks as the big, bad monster that moves into town and dares to offer coffee consumers better customer service. He notes that Starbucks has thrived in places that long needed a lifting of the local standards, that many mom & pop coffeeshops learned to improve with competition, and that there are places with good quality coffeeshops to begin with (such as New Zealand) where Starbucks has become superfluous.

I’ll agree with him that the world is littered with independent coffeehouse deadwood that could use a good, controlled burn. But I’ll argue that customer service is just gravy in the larger scheme of things. I’ve had some of the worst customer service in the world (at least at first) at Sant’Eustachio il caffè in Rome, and yet it’s one of my favorite cafés the world over. Instead, I’d argue that the quality of the coffee and the welcoming nature of the location itself are the biggest drivers for making people pass over their local mom & pops.

In the Days Before Coffee Perestroika

One of Starbucks greatest gifts to humanity was in raising a general awareness that coffee could be a luxury item, something to be enjoyed for its own sake — and not just a commodity to be endured for its desirable psychochemical effects. Granted, Starbucks could only push the quality formula so far before expansion and the corresponding dilution of quality capped them off. But standards were so low in some places for so long, Starbucks can be viewed as the nectar of the gods. (I’ve always likened Starbucks as the Mikhail Gorbachev of quality coffee’s Perestroika period: instrumental to the revolution, but irrelevant once unable to keep up with the pace of what they put into motion.)

Another standard Starbucks helped establish was that a coffeehouse doesn’t have to be a dirty, decrepit hovel with abused and mismatched furniture, gritty floors, and bathrooms that make highway rest stops seem good enough for surgery. In my own observations, this factor alone seems to particularly resonate with a number of women I know. Could you imagine a self-respecting tea parlor with the standards of many independent coffeehouses? A lot of women just don’t want to scrub themselves down with anti-bacterial wipes before entering and after leaving.

As for customer service, long lines are always a turn-off. Particularly for the set that prefers to have scalding-hot coffee poured directly into their bare hands (skipping the paper cup) to run out the door with … for nursing throughout the day. But if the quality is there, people are always willing to wait in line. (Ever notice the lines outside Tartine Bakery & Café? Or more to the point: the lines outside House of Nanking compared to the empty Chinese restaurants next door to it?)

He’s got the right argument — just the wrong reasoning. But what’s a guy running a CRM blog supposed to say?

This is a rather non-descript French bakery/café. But don’t let that fool you. It has won numerous “best bakery” awards in the area and is immensely popular. (And yes, even Martha Stewart paid a visit here just a week ago.) It is also notorious for its Soviet-style bread lines, which run long out the door on weekend mornings. Most patrons cut it some slack — attributing the lines to the price of demand for quality. But I have to fault part of that to their inability to ring up and serve a croissant and coffee at a rate of faster than one every two minutes. (While they are a fantastic bakery, they are also painfully slow and inefficient.)

The café has dark interior colors, shared tables in tight quarters, and plenty of sidewalk seating. Insanely good baked goods, various wines, and lunch fare. (In the fall of 2005 they opened up Bar Tartine for dinners at 561 Valencia nearby.) Making a serious attempt at espresso, they have a separate, dedicated espresso bar and barista. They once had an antique espresso machine with an unusual design, levers, and valves (it appeared to be an old Faema E61 Legend based on the groups), but they’ve since replaced it with a more standard, sturdy three-group La Marzocco Linea.

Unfortunately, their dedication and investment into quality espresso can’t escape the “French coffee curse”. (The barista wasn’t entirely sure of the maker, let alone model, of the machine she was using either — which is also not a good sign.) They serve espresso with a pale, thin crema — which is often the mark of a sour espresso due to an improperly low brewing temperature.

Fortunately, it does not suffer from any sourness in flavor. (As my friends at Mr. Espresso accurately suggested upon reading this post, Tartine often cuts off their shots much sooner than the proper 20-22 seconds of brewing — perhaps in order to handle their customer volume more quickly.) It’s a generally bright-tasting espresso with slight nutty and medicinal flavor notes. But the thin body comes off entirely in the French style, resulting in an underwhelming cup that suggests little more than glorified drip coffee. In the several times I’ve sampled their espresso over the past three years, they have been rather consistent in this regard.

Yet somehow this coffee was inexplicably ranked fifth in CitySearch.com’s 2005 Best San Francisco coffee, as voted by site visitors. This only underscores my marvel at and appreciation for how well the French can dazzle you with food and an ambience to where you are completely oblivious to what’s being served in your coffee cup. Even if it is a nice, classic brown, thick-walled Nuova Point cup at that.

It is no wonder that their business postcards prominently display the image of the classic French café-au-lait-in-a-cat-bowl. Drown an espresso under enough milk, and you can hide a lot of defects. It is not bad espresso by any means (it’s currently tied for #230 on CoffeeRatings.com). But if milk is your thing, I recommend that you put on your snorkel fins and dive in.

Read the updated review.

Celebrities are out in full regalia. Tension is in the air. It must be time to review the reviewers as we recap the winners of CitySearch.com’s 2005 Best San Francisco Coffee.

Each year, CitySearch.com stages regional popularity contests for establishments in different categories. And each year, they tabulate the online votes from the users of their Web sites.

Citing their Web site, let’s take it from the bottom and work our way the pinnacle of San Francisco coffee…

10. The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf
2201 Fillmore St, San Francisco, CA
A family-run empire of cafe-shops that’s been brewing caffeinated beverages since 1963.

So you grew up in the Los Angeles basin and have been looking for a local hangout since moving to the Upper Fillmore? This is the place for you. But if you must pick a chain, this isn’t a bad one (save for their problematic new café on Market St.). Afterall, this chain is where Café Organica‘s Eton Tsuno got his start.

9. Caffe Greco
423 Columbus Ave, San Francisco, CA
Strong, authentic espresso draws Italian expats to this highly regarded cafe.

Like much of North beach, this café is hardly the Italian stalwart it used to be. You’re more likely to hear the barista singing Alejandro Sanz than Dean Martin. But the espresso is good, albeit inconsistent, and the atmosphere almost feels like you’re in Italy.

Big plus: recent copies of the pink La Gazzetta dello Sport are freely available on the wall near the cashier to catch up on the latest Serie A calcio (Italian soccer) scores and post-game debate.

Big minus: Their coffee is packed in cans and flown over 6,000 miles before it makes it into your cup. Illy may be the king of quality when it comes to packaged coffee, but freshness is not one of their virtues.

8. Blue Danube Coffee House
306 Clement St, San Francisco, CA
Bohemian java joint with an extensive menu of eats.

Again with the eats? Always be wary of a coffee place known for its food. Not surprisingly, Blue Danube didn’t even break my Top 150. I can only imagine they are ranked for their bohemian atmosphere and the lack of good coffee options along the Taiwanese-American Clement St. corridor. Come for the espresso, but stay for the live geoduck.

If you ever go on a quest for good espresso in Taipei, I can guarantee that this will make your Top 10 list too. (I know from personal experience.)

7. Caffe Trieste
609 Vallejo St, San Francisco, CA
Settle down with an espresso, soak up the bohemian North Beach ambience and think existential thoughts ’til sundown.

Mama mia! This café is one of the true old Italian holdouts in North Beach, down to the weekend opera. Their espresso can be a bit dark for some, but it’s still one of the better examples in the city.

And to the critics, Caffe Trieste may have evolved more to become what it used to represent rather than what it truly is today. But what better place to lay down the script to The Godfather?

6. Mr Espresso
696 3RD St, Oakland, CA

CitySearch.com had nothing to say about this lone entry outside of the SF city confines. Probably because their editors had no idea that Mr. Espresso doesn’t serve coffee. Mr. Espresso is a long time family institution in the Bay Area — as a roaster, as a supplier of machines, and as a provider of training and other coffee service. They are arguably the best full-service espresso outfit around.

I recently talked with Luigi DiRuocco, a staffer there. He lamented over the many Bay Area cafés that neglect staff training. Mr. Espresso apparently made staff training a big initiative, and they’re working to convince their customers that their shots are capable of so much more. I am the primo uomo in that choir.

Props to the CitySearch.com users who thought to vote for this local institution, even if you can’t buy a cup of joe from them.

5. Tartine Bakery
600 Guerrero St, San Francisco, CA
This small storefront bakery lights up the Mission with sophisticated French pastries and artisanal loaves.

Two major problems with this brief write up. First: that’s nice about the loaves, but what about the coffee? Second: it’s French!

That said, this is a fantastic bakery with a fiendishly original/old school espresso setup. They get bonus points for trying very hard at their espresso, and for the most part it pays off. Eventhough their espresso is more in the French style, it does not come off bitter and watery. Their espresso quality is held back most, however, by the limits of their novelty Faema machine. Sometimes you have to sacrifice form for a little function.

4. Cafe Abir
1300 Fulton St, San Francisco, CA
Loyal Western Addition regulars line up for the house blend at this neighborhood cafe.

I never understood the appeal of Café Abir… or at least the appeal of their coffee. Yes, they roast it themselves. Yes, they also won the 2003 SF Bay Guardian readers’ award for Best Independent Coffeehouse. But their espresso just barely cracked my Top 350.

I can only attribute their ranking here to the intense neighborhood loyalty of its patrons, who seem to value the commendable efforts the owners have made to improve the Divisidero neighborhood. That and they do carry a nice selection of reading material at their newsstand.

File under: I just don’t get it. Maybe if I regularly got my coffee at the Church’s Chicken down the street, I’d feel the love.

3. Farley’s Coffeehouse
1315 18th St, San Francisco, CA
Giant java drinks and a no-way-Jose policy on nonfat milk make this coffeehouse a local favorite.

Like Abir, Farley’s benefits from the strong local loyalties of a somewhat isolated city community. It’s a great hang out, but unlike Café Abir, the espresso is also quite good.

(Though as an aside, I personally like the texture qualities of nonfat milk when making my own macchiatos at home, so I don’t get their badge of honor here.)

2. Peet’s Coffee & Tea
2139 Polk St Ste C, San Francisco, CA
Even post-IPO, Peet’s celebrates its bohemian upbringing with dark-roast beans.

I have yet to sample every Peet’s in the Bay Area, and this outlet is proof of that. While I have noticed significant differences between some Peet’s cafés, I can safely assume that this one ranks among the best of the Peet’s I have reviewed. Which is a pretty great cup of espresso. Alfred should remain proud of his legacy.

Particularly with the recent demise of Torrefazione Italia — once Starbucks bought them out and mercilessly flushed their superior brand of competition down the toilet — there is no better Bay Area chain at making espresso today.

1. Dolores Park Cafe
501 Dolores Street @18th, San Francisco, CA
A clean, welcoming coffeehouse and lunch spot with a prime location next to Dolores Park.

More and more dogs in the city must be getting Internet access, because that’s my only explanation for why Dolores Park Cafe would get the nod for San Francisco’s best coffee.

This is a great spot to bring Fifi, have an omelet, and read the morning paper with a great view of nearby Dolores Park. Their espresso is a rather workman-like effort, but it mostly does the trick. But best coffee?!

It’s a fitting closing to this article, though, when I can conclude that San Francisco espresso has gone to the dogs.